September 2017

When it comes to Halloween, there is no shortage of good books to read. You could pretty much make an entire list from books by Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates or Clive Barker and scare yourself silly. Revisiting old childhood favorites, like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or series by R. L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Richie Tankersley Cusick and other favorites is really fun this time of year, especially if you have younger siblings, children or students to share them with.

Feminsm, creatures, violence, friendship, cannibalism... Marjorie Liu's comic Monstress seems to have it all. Originally, Liu wanted to simply write about girls and monsters, including elements of war, the supernatural and a few other ideas. She had no idea how the story would become an epic saga that fans salivate over.

Are you excited about the new Runaways program about youth with super powers? It's premiering on Hulu soon and while it looks really interesting, I can already spot lots of differences from the photos versus the characters in the comics. It's always the case, really--there are very few instances of a comic being completely, faithfully adapted onto the screen. What's exciting is that this is an adaptation of a Brian K. Vaughan work, and Vaughan is known to reject having his works like Saga made into movies or programs.

Although purists will argue that we've had blurred lines between good and evil since the invention of heroes, in reality, those lines are drawn hard in pop culture. Just look at Captain America's latest revelation to see how that turns out! We're often only given one perspective of a hero, and it's rarely from the opposition. What about the perspective of the children of a villain that a beloved superhero has put behind bars?